10 Times Well-Loved Scientists Were Total Jerks
6. University Of California - Experimenting On Newborns
As if frightening the life out of orphans wasn't bad enough, researchers at the University of California began an experiment in the 1960s, looking into changes in blood pressure and blood flow ... on newborn babies.
The 113 test subjects ranged from one hour to three days old and were the subject of a series of experiments that were, if not dangerous, pretty mean.
The experiments ranged from dunking the babies' feet in ice water to pushing a needle through the umbilical arteries all the way to the heart.
Then, just because they thought they hadn't quite achieve optimum jerk levels yet, in a separate experiment, someone had the bright idea of strapping 50 newborns to a tilting table so that all the blood would rush to their heads.
None of the infants appear to have been harmed by the experiments, but it's a pretty rough way to spend your first couple of days on earth.